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Modern Science: Quadriplegic Uses Robotic Skeleton to Walk

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A French optician paralyzed from the neck down showed the world that modern science is full of miracles, as he was equipped with a robotic skeleton controlled by his mind that enabled him to walk.

The patient, referred to as Thibault, fell 50 feet from a nightclub roof in 2015, leaving him a quadriplegic. But although his muscles still suffer from paralysis, he practiced using video simulations, ultimately getting the exoskeleton to walk 475 feet total over 39 sessions as it was attached to a suspended harness on the ceiling. . .

The Daily Mail reported, “The exoskeleton, which is attached to the ceiling for support, is designed to collect these messages and move how the patient wishes to. Two sensors containing 64 electrodes each are placed underneath the skull, over areas of the brain that control movement in the limbs. These sensors collect brain signals from Thibault, software decodes what they mean and then the exoskeleton with 14 joints receives directions. The placing of the sensors depends on which parts of the spinal cord are damaged and what movements a patient isn’t able to do.”

Thibault said: “It’s not an exoskeleton for going to the bar with my friends but I’ve achieved something that’s a first. I didn’t move for two years and I had forgotten what it was like to stand. I forgot I was taller than a lot of people in the room and it was very impressive.” He added that walking felt like being the “first man on the Moon.”

Eureka Alert added, “Over the 24 months of the trial, the system did not need to be recalibrated for up to seven weeks, demonstrating that it may be suitable for day-to-day use over a long period. The quality of the recordings from the implants remained stable, the algorithm continued to decode the signals, and the patient experienced no post-surgical complications.” (Read. more from “Modern Science: Quadriplegic Uses Robotic Skeleton to Walk” HERE)

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Scientists Say New Mind-Reading Machine Can Translate Thoughts Into Text

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By The Blaze. Scientists have developed a new mind-reading machine that translates what you are thinking and instantly displays your thoughts as text, the Daily Mail reported . . .

Here’s how it works: Electrodes are implanted in the brain and linked to a computer that translates electrical signals transmitted by the brain.

Scientists claim the machine can interpret the consonants and vowels we use to form thoughts. The Daily Mail explains:

The machine registers and analyses the combination of vowels and consonants that we use when constructing a sentence in our brains. It interprets these sentences based on neural signals and can translate them into text in real time.

Finally, these “thoughts” are translated into words, which appear on a monitor screen. (Read more from “Scientists Say New Mind-Reading Machine Can Translate Thoughts Into Text” HERE)

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No More Secrets! New Mind-Reading Machine Can Translate Your Thoughts and Display Them as Text INSTANTLY

By Daily Mail. Scientists have developed an astonishing mind-reading machine which can translate what you are thinking and instantly display it as text.

They claim that it has an accuracy rate of 90 per cent or more and say that it works by interpreting consonants and vowels in our brains.

The researchers believe that the machine could one day help patients who suffer from conditions that don’t allow them to speak or move.

The machine registers and analyses the combination of vowels and consonants that we use when constructing a sentence in our brains.

It interprets these sentences based on neural signals and can translate them into text in real time. (Read more from “No More Secrets! New Mind-Reading Machine Can Translate Your Thoughts and Display Them as Text INSTANTLY” HERE)

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Scientists: New Cure for Baldness Discovered in Mcdonald’s French Fries

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A new study shows that the cure for baldness could lie within McDonald’s fries, sadly not by eating them.

Japanese scientists have found a “simple” method to regrow hair on mice and say that it could likely work on humans too.

A stem cell research team from Yokohama National University used the silicone added to McDonald’s fries to stop cooking oil from frothing, called dimethylpolysiloxane, to regrow hair on mice.

The study published in Science Daily last week focuses on moving hair follicles to areas on the mouse without hair, according to USA Today.

The researchers used the dimethylpolysiloxane as part of an “oxygen-permeable” solution and created “5,000 HFGs simultaneously, and report(ed) new hair growth from the HFGs after transplantation into mice.”

“The key for the mass production of HFGs was a choice of substrate materials for culture vessel,” Professor Junji Fukuda said in the press release, according to Business Insider. “We used oxygen-permeable dimethylpolysiloxane at the bottom of culture vessel, and it worked very well.”

Business Insider pointed out that the chemical on its own does not trigger hair growth, so eating McDonald’s fries will probably not help with hair growth.

“These self-sorted hair follicle germs were shown to be capable of efficient hair-follicle and shaft generation upon intracutaneous transplantation into the backs of nude mice,” Fukuda said in the study, according to USA Today.

Researchers added that more studies will need to be done, but their findings are “promising” for regrowing human hair.

“This simple method is very robust and promising,” Fukuda said. “We hope this technique will improve human hair regenerative therapy to treat hair loss such as androgenic alopecia (male pattern baldness).”

“In fact, we have preliminary data that suggests human HFG formation using human keratinocytes and dermal papilla cells,” he added.

Twitter users reacted to the study.

According to NBC News, McDonald’s buys 3.4 billion pounds of U.S. potatoes annually to make their french fries. (For more from the author of “Scientists: New Cure for Baldness Discovered in Mcdonald’s French Fries” please click HERE)

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Scientists Clone Monkeys, Break Barrier to Human Cloning

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By Reuters. Chinese scientists have cloned monkeys using the same technique that produced Dolly the sheep two decades ago, breaking a technical barrier that could open the door to copying humans.

Zhong Zhong and Hua Hua, two identical long-tailed macaques, were born eight and six weeks ago, making them the first primates — the order of mammals that includes monkeys, apes and humans — to be cloned from a non-embryonic cell.

It was achieved through a process called somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT), which involves transferring the nucleus of a cell, which includes its DNA, into an egg which has had its nucleus removed.

Researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Neuroscience in Shanghai said their work should be a boon to medical research by making it possible to study diseases in populations of genetically uniform monkeys.

But it also brings the feasibility of cloning to the doorstep of our own species. (Read more from “Scientists Clone Monkeys, Break Barrier to Human Cloning” HERE)

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In a Scientific First, Cloned Monkeys Are Born

By Sharon Begley. There have been mice and cows and pigs and camels, bunnies and bantengs and ferrets and dogs, but ever since Dolly the sheep became the first cloned mammal in 1996, the list has had a conspicuous hole: primates. Now that hole has been filled.

Scientists in China reported on Wednesday in Cell that they had cloned two healthy long-tailed macaque monkeys from the cells of another macaque, using the Dolly technique. The two clones, born 51 and 49 days ago, were created from a fetus’s cells; so far, the scientists have not been able to make the tricky procedure work when they used cells from adult macaques. That would seem to postpone the dystopian day when cloning children and grown-ups becomes as mainstream as IVF. But because “the technical barrier [to cloning primates] is now broken,” co-author Mu-ming Poo of the Institute of Neuroscience in Shanghai told reporters, the technique “could be applied to humans” — something he said his team has no intention of doing and sees no reason for.

Cloning pioneers said the monkey clones represented, as Dr. Robert Lanza put it, “an impressive breakthrough, which overcomes the last major hurdle in the field.” Lanza co-led teams that cloned a gaur in 2000 and in 2014 used the Dolly technique to produce human embryos (but not pregnancies) from the cells of an adult. (Read more from “In a Scientific First, Cloned Monkeys Are Born” HERE)

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World’s First Human Head Transplant a Success

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By Sarah Knapton. The world’s first human head transplant has allegedly been performed on a corpse in an 18 hour operation which successfully connected the spine, nerves and blood vessels of two people.

The operation was carried out by a team led by Dr Xiaoping Ren of Harbin Medical University, China, who last year successfully grafted a head onto the body of a monkey.

Italian Professor Sergio Canavero, Director of the Turin Advanced Neuromodulation Group, who has been working with the team, said they would ‘imminently’ move onto a living human who was paralysed from the neck down.

He told The Telegraph that electrical stimulation of the nerves proved the operation on the corpse had been successful, and that the two people had been completely attached. (Read more from “World’s First Human Head Transplant a Success” HERE)

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Did the Human Head Transplant Really Happen? Not So Fast, Say Some

By IFL Science. Never too far away from making headlines, the controversial neurosurgeon Sergio Canavero is back with claims that the world’s first head transplant is “imminent”, after Chinese scientists successfully carried out the first head transplant on a human corpse.

He revealed the news at a press conference in Vienna on Friday morning, The Telegraph reports. Professor Canavero claims the feat was carried out during an 18-hour operation at Harbin Medical University in China, during which a team of surgeons successfully severed then reconnected the spinal cord, nerves, and blood vessels in the spine and neck. . .

“The first human transplant on human cadavers has been done,” Canavero told the crowd, according to the Telegraph. “A full head swap between brain-dead organ donors is the next stage. And that is the final step for the formal head transplant for a medical condition which is imminent.” (Read more from “Did the Human Head Transplant Happen?” HERE)

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The Real Threats to Science: Sloppiness, Bias and Fraud

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I had dinner with a friend of mine in New York’s Cornelia St. Café. She told me about her Brooklyn neighborhood’s March for Science: “A neighbor child organized a parade around our block. It was adorable: kids made up their own signs and their own chants.”

It sounds adorable. Also vaguely creepy. Like this San Francisco restaurant owner announcing that “food is inherently political.” Her Middle Eastern eatery, she claims is the place where people will have open and honest conversations. Well, maybe some people.

The Brooklyn Children’s March for Science? It reminds me of when Soviet kids used to playact show trials of their peers. All to defend St. Vladimir Lenin’s glorious Revolution. Read The Whisperers if you want to see how creepy the politicization of everything can become. The essence of the totalitarian impulse is: Everything is political. Fortunately for us, that impulse isn’t backed by guns yet. Just tweets, marches and shoving matches in the street.

The Left craves a substitute for religion or morality. They want certain truths to be self-evident and unquestionable. So they yoke science to their ideology. The better to bash political opponents over the head.

What Would You Do to Get Your Paper Published?

Meanwhile there is a real, actual crisis in science taking place today: a massive failure to replicate major medical scientific findings.

Springer publishing last week retracted 107 papers from the journal Tumor Biology. Retraction Watch called it the most retractions from a single journal in history. The studies were pulled because the authors had compromised the peer review process. How? By getting editors to submit their paper to fake peer reviewers. In some cases, the authors submitted real scientists’ names but gave editors fake email addresses. That allowed them to review their own papers.

Think about it: So-called scientists risking the health of cancer patients to ensure that their precious papers get published. Like abusive clergy, they are a tiny minority. But they are bad apples who need to be tossed out fast.

This is the tip of the iceberg. A major review of landmark studies in cancer research found that “scientific findings were confirmed in only 6 (or 11 percent of) cases. Even knowing the limitations of preclinical research, this was a shocking result.”

Last week, Retraction Watch also published a letter from a biostatistician pointing out that many recent studies in ten major biology journals contained a basic and crucial omission: the sample size of the study was either unclear or unknown. In Cell, a major biology journal, 8 out of 10 recent articles published did not provide a clear sample size. Failing to report the sample size means it’s virtually impossible to replicate the finding. This is statistics 101. What better way to avoid scrutiny?

Scientific Progress Requires a Commitment to Truth

A similar problem plagues the psychological sciences. Here the pressures are mostly to produce the results pleasing to the social justice tribe (minus any justice for unborn babies).

Protecting science is enormously important. Marching in the streets just makes things worse.

Scientific progress requires scientists whose first and fearless commitment is to the truth, not to partisan visions of social justice. Scientists are of course also human beings. So they are tempted by the same things other people are tempted by: applause, money, status, fear of social exclusion.

Cleaning up science is a job for scientists with integrity. There is little you and I can do about it.

Well, there is one thing: taxpayers could insist that data from any government funded studies be posted online upon publication. President Trump, are you listening? (For more from the author of “The Real Threats to Science: Sloppiness, Bias and Fraud” please click HERE)

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Protest All You Want, but Science Can’t Tell Trump How to Govern

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[Yesterday], a group of concerned citizens participated in the March for Science, a gathering on the National Mall in Washington, DC, protesting the Trump Administration’s attitudes towards science, accompanied by the assertion that science should be a motivating factor in determining public policy.

The appeal to science is one of the progressive movement’s go-to tactics in the attempt to appear reasonable and unbiased. After all, science doesn’t have a political agenda, right? As Joe Friday said, it’s “just the facts, ma’am.” And since science is synonymous with learning, inquiry, and critical thought, the only people who would reject science must be ignorant, unintelligent, and superstitious.

The trouble with this line of reasoning is that it anthropomorphizes science into something that has opinions, conclusions, and recommendations. This not only fundamentally misunderstands the concept of science, but can lead down some pretty dangerous roads if we’re not careful.

First of all, let’s get straight what science is and is not. The word “science” is only a noun for grammatical convenience. In reality, science is not a “thing,” but a set of methods that, when applied appropriately, can answer certain questions about the world in which we live. Science is a process. It is not something you can “believe in,” and it cannot “say” anything. When you hear people claiming to believe in science or that science says the Earth is warming, they are misusing the term and projecting their own beliefs onto a set of abstract principles.

And while science is excellent at answering questions when applied properly, it can also be applied improperly, or used sloppily to give answers that don’t reflect reality. This is why it’s so ridiculous to assign conclusions to science. The conclusions are really those of certain fallible humans who have used certain techniques in an effort to answer questions. You can argue that their techniques were good or bad, but you can’t just declare an entire discipline in agreement on any questions of great import.

It’s all well and good to say that science should guide public policy, but what does that really mean? In one sense, this is basically the same as saying language should guide public policy. It’s so obvious as to be meaningless. Every road and bridge, every piece of military equipment, all telecommunications were designed and constructed using scientific principles. Without science, it would be impossible to have any public policy at all.

What these protestors really mean, of course, is that they want their particular conclusions on controversial topics to be the standard by which government operates, particularly when it relates to climate science. But even if we could all agree that climate change is caused by man and is something that will cause problems, science cannot tell us what to do about it. Decisions about tradeoffs between human welfare now and in the future, prioritizing some people over others, and central planning versus individual freedom are well outside the scope of the scientific method.

I cannot help but be reminded of our most scientifically minded president, Woodrow Wilson. The only president to hold a Ph.D., Wilson was eager to use science to guide the country forward, and this eagerness caused him to embrace some things that, in hindsight, were really, really bad ideas. The American eugenics movement, supported by Wilson, held that the nation could be improved by forcibly sterilizing the unfit, the criminals and the mentally disabled and allowing only the strongest to breed. Darwin’s theory of natural selection gave scientific credence to the idea that this was possible, and so-called enlightened men went along with it. Tens of thousands of Americans were forcibly sterilized before the horrors of World War II soured us on the idea.

The point of this story is not to say that global warming alarmism is akin to eugenics, but to point out that science cannot answer the moral questions, such as “Is it okay to rob people of their liberty for the good of the species?” That is the domain of philosophy. Personally, I would rather more energy be spent on ensuring that our president has a good philosophy of government than on flogging for science that can be misused and manipulated — and that ultimately can’t answer life’s most important questions. (For more from the author of “Protest All You Want, but Science Can’t Tell Trump How to Govern” please click HERE)

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March for Science a Dud

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I am pleased to report the asinine March “for” “Science” has been a dud.

Organizers lit the fuse of what they thought was going to be an enormous stick of dynamite. Wait until you hear the boom, honey! But what they got was tiny pop from a damp ladyfinger.

Pop. No exclamation mark.

The Independent quoted some guy called Peter Lipke, who said, “I’m a science professor.” This prepped the reader, signalling some solid science was on its way. Lipke continued, “The current administration has shown complete disregard for facts and the truth.”

Now, scientifically, this is a dumb statement, because, of course, it is false. It’s not only false, it’s petulant fantasy. President Trump has only been in office a short while, and it’s not like he’s taken to television and said, “My fellow Americans. E equals M C-squared is inefficient. I propose to Make America Great Again with C-cubed.”

The most the perpetually “outraged” have on him is that his administration removed the global warming propaganda from the White House website. Big deal. Yet it was that “momentous” event that triggered the easily triggered into staging the March.

The insufferable and ever-smug Vox began its “explanation” of the March with a picture of a kid, maybe eight or so, holding the sign, “Climate change is real.”

As (ahem) I explained before, there isn’t anybody outside the walls of any medical institution that doesn’t believe that. So this poor young man could just as well held up a sign which read, “Ice is colder than steam.”

I bet he would have received a special award for that.

In the same Vox picture, a plain-looking woman is holding the sign, “Your global warming can’t melt this Snowflake.”

She’s right, you know. Given global-warming-of-doom has failed to materialize as predicted (over and over and over again), very few snowflakes are being melted.

Vox never disappoints. They checked the “fatuous” box by quoting a sociologist who “studies protest movements”, and she said — are you ready for more science? — “Protest is also an opportunity to create what we call ‘collective identity.’”

Who knew? I mean, who knew scientists were so smart?

That’s a real problem. The tasks and decisions ahead of us are far too important to be left to scientists. A scientist will tell you on Tuesday that “David Hume teaches us that ought cannot be derived from is,” meaning the moral and ethical consequences of any decision do not follow from any fact, such as what the temperature outside is.

But then on Thursday, this selfsame scientist will screech in your ear that “Climate change is real!” as if it is obvious what moral and ethical decisions we must make because of that fact.

Whether the scientist is right about Hume, her statement proves the real problem we’re facing is not one of science, but of philosophy (and religion). Science is tiddlywinks next to the metaphysical dilemmas gripping the West. But never mind. That subject is too much for us today.

Time magazine kindly supplied a video of high-pitched, ear-grating woo-wooing protesters (I still say the DOD was wrong to reject my proposal to weaponize the progressive protester voice). One guy held the sign, “Climate change cannot be undone by tweeting.” But it can be by holding up an idiotic sign?

A white lady, with what looked like tape across her mouth (it could have been a pacifier), held up the science sign, “White supremacists have melanin envy.” Dude, loosen the tape and have something to eat. Your synapses are running low on glucose.

In one of the satellite marches in Los Angeles, a good handful of people showed up, one carrying the sign, “Make wind, not warming.” Flatulence jokes in a science march? Where’s the respect?

In London, another sign: “Wake Up World! *Can’t eat money *Can’t drink oil. SCIENCE for a sustainable society.” This is true and scientific. But you can use money to buy oil and use it to farm lots and lots of food. And there is nothing more sustainable than well-fed people.

Australia. “I create knowledge. What’s your superpower?” Sarcasm.

Slate has a page devoted to March signs. They do not disappoint. One read, “Knowing Stuff is good. Seriously why do I even have to march for this geez.” Should I tell him or will you?

One (perhaps prescient) lady tweeted “#TheFutureisFemale” and showed the sign, “Women and the Earth have to tolerate a lot.” I wept in pity when I read that bit of science.

The Chicago Tribune tweeted the headline, “‘There is no Planet B!’ cried a 6-year-old girl during March for Science Chicago.” I cried too (the March has made me especially lachrymose), because this poor 6-year-old girl is wrong. Not only is there a planet B, but there is a C, D, … Why, there are nearly 4,000 other planets we know about!

Pagans were out in force. One lady held the sign, “I [heart] Biomimicry, Mother [earth] knows best.” In a freak coincidence, right next to her was another lady with the sign, “Mother knows best. Listen to her. #Biomimicry.”

These were the truest signs of the day. Nothing but mimicry as far as the eye could see. Everybody had exactly the same thoughts on everything. It’s science! (For more from the author of “March for Science a Dud” please click HERE)

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Bill Nye: The Perfect Talking Head for a March against Science

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Bill Nye may not be a scientist. But he used to play one on TV. Now he is an honorary co-chair and speaker for the “March for Science” in Washington D.C. and elsewhere on April 22.

The choice of Nye as one of the faces of the March is revealing. March organizers have paid lip service to critical thinking and “diverse perspectives” in science. However, Nye is a good example of someone who promotes science as a close-minded ideology, not an open search for truth.

He attacks those who disagree with him on climate change or evolution as science “deniers.” He wouldn’t even rule out criminal prosecution as a tool. Asked last year whether he supported efforts to jail climate skeptics as war criminals, he replied: “Well, we’ll see what happens. Was it appropriate to jail the guys from ENRON?”

Real science encourages debate. It doesn’t insist that scientists march in lockstep. Or that they speak with one voice. In fact, scientists disagree on far more issues than the March organizers admit.

Models Vs. Evidence

Take global warming. Many marchers will wear their belief in climate change on their sleeves. On their signs, too. They, like Nye and others who claim to speak for science, equate belief in man-made climate disaster with science itself. If you disagree, you’re “anti-science.”

Yet there are strong reasons to doubt the so-called “consensus” on warming. But the popular media rarely cite them.

From 1890 to 1990, records show only a .45 degree C rise in global temperature as measured from near-surface thermometers around the Earth. Yet about 75 percent of the increase occurred before World War II, while most of the increase in human produced greenhouse gases occurred after World War II. So, human industrial activity doesn’t really correlate with the main effect of interest. Meanwhile, after a few warmer than usual years in the early 1990s, global temperatures have flat-lined. They show no net increase over the last two decades.

Most warmists’ models have predicted steep rises. But these models don’t match the real global temperatures collected after the fact. So why believe the dire predictions that those same models make about future temperatures before the fact?

Bill Nye, Al Gore, and former President Obama have said we must accept what “the scientists” say. To listen to the skeptics would be to reject “settled science.” But skeptics of extreme warming include many top scientists: physicists, biologists, earth and atmospheric scientists like Richard Lindzen (MIT), Freeman Dyson and William Happer (Princeton), Roy Spencer (University of Alabama, formerly NASA), John Christy (Earth System Science Center, University of Alabama), and Matt Ridley (DPhil, Oxford). How strong can the “consensus” be if such stars of science question the idea?

What About Neo-Darwinism?

But let’s say widespread agreement did exist on the question. Has such an agreement served as an error-free guide to truth in the past? The history of science says no.

Here’s another scientific issue to ponder. Nye claims the evidence for evolution is “Undeniable.” That’s how he put it in the title of his recent book. By “evolution” he means textbook neo-Darwinism. So the case for evolution is “undeniable”? In truth, many leading scientists, including evolutionary biologists, reject neo-Darwinism. Many biologists now doubt the creative power of random mutation with natural selection. But that is the core idea of the theory.

This past November I attended a conference of the prestigious Royal Society of London. The meeting was called to address this problem. Speaking first, biologist Gerd Müller listed the “explanatory deficits” of neo-Darwinism. He said those include its failure to explain the “origin of biological complexity” and the origin of major morphological “novelties.” It also doesn’t predict their abrupt appearance in the fossil record.

Other biologists echo his concerns. They argue that mutation and selection can account for “the survival, but not the arrival of the fittest.” That is, minor, but not major, changes in the history of life.

I say more on this in my book Darwin’s Doubt. For instance, neo-Darwinism fails to explain the origin of the new genetic information needed to build new forms of life.

Our own experience with computer code helps to explain why. Random changes to the digital characters in a section of functioning software code will degrade the information in a program and destroy its function. That will happen long before those changes can generate a new program or operating system. Yet, neo-Darwinists invoke just such random changes to the characters in the genetic text to explain where new genetic information comes from. Mathematicians who know biology say “not a chance.”

What Do You Mean By “Evolution”?

In any case, the textbook examples of natural selection and random mutations do not involve creating new genetic information. Many biology texts tell about the famous finches in the Galápagos Islands whose beaks have waxed and waned in shape and length over time. These books also recall how moths in England got darker and lighter as levels of industrial pollution changed. Darwinists present such cases as knockdown evidence for evolution. But that depends on what you mean by “evolution.”

That term has many meanings. “Evolution” can refer to anything from minor change within the limits of a gene pool to the creation of wholly new genetic information and structures.

Yet, as a host of biologists have argued in recent papers, small-scale “micro-evolutionary” changes can’t explain large-scale “macro-evolution.” Mostly, micro-evolution (such as changes in color or shape) just uses pre-existing genetic information. But the large changes needed to build new organs or whole body plans need entirely new sources of information. This explains the growing doubts about the power of natural selection and random mutation.

It also explains why many biologists are seeking new theories of evolution. As yet, though, nothing like a consensus is emerging.

March for Conformist Science

Don’t expect Nye or the others “marching for science” to breath a word about any of this. And that’s a shame. A real “March for Science” would celebrate scientific puzzles, disagreements, and competing ideas rather than fear them.

Just ask Italian philosopher of science Marcello Pera. In his book The Discourses of Science, he writes that science advances as scientists argue about how to interpret the evidence. They can only do that, though, if they are free to challenge established ideas and advance new ones.

Those who truly want to support science should defend the right of all scientists — including dissenters — to express their views. Those who stigmatize dissent do not protect science from its enemies. Instead, they subvert the process of scientific discovery they claim to revere. (For more from the author of “Bill Nye: The Perfect Talking Head for a March against Science” please click HERE)

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March for Science Descending Into Farce

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Last thing the March for Science needs, say some agitated folks, is Bill Nye the “Science Guy” co-leading the parade. Why?

Their complaint is not that he’s an error–prone non-scientist, though that’s true. See, Nye is white. And a man. And some organizers are concerned that onlookers will notice Nye is white, and a man, and project his male-whiteness onto science itself. That in turn will cause the gullible to figure science is mostly done by white men.

Which, historically and in many current fields, it was and is. Now this fact may be for good or for bad, but it is a fact. And it’s not likely those who say they are “for” science and reason would be pleased were the contributions from white men removed from science. So long, calculus!

Or maybe they would be. Because it seems organizers believe scientific results are less important than who is producing them. Diversity trumps science.

Proof? Buzzfeed reports that, so far, the March for Science has already gone through “four diversity statements.” So the Twitter account @ScienceMarchDC tweeted (and later deleted) “colonization, racism, immigration, native rights, sexism, ableism, queer-, trans-, intersex-phobia, & econ justice are scientific issues.” The tweet also pictured a black power fist and rainbow flag icons.

Of course, science per se is silent on all these matters. But that’s because natural science alone is mute on every moral and ethical question put to it. Including the question whether to deign to include a white man holding a science baton.

“I love Bill Nye,” said Stephani Page, a biophysicist at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, who created the Twitter hashtag #BlackAndSTEM. Page was asked to join the march’s board in February after she tweeted criticism of its approach to diversity. “But I do feel comfortable saying to you what I said to the steering committee: He is a white male, and in that way he does represent the status quo of science, of what it is to be a scientist.”

And being a scientist is not about race and sex. It’s about intelligence, talent, interest, drive, money, and luck. Much the same as what success in most fields require.

The March organizers say nothing about this. They want us to know what they really stand for (emphasis original):

Inclusion, diversity, equity, and accessibility are integral to this mission and to our overall goals and principles. People have rightly pointed out that some of our own public communications, including social media posts, have not affirmed this stance. …We are actively partnering with and seeking advice from organizations and individuals with expertise in this area. We cannot ignore issues of racism, sexism, homophobia, ableism, xenophobia, or any other form of discrimination in the discussion and implementation of science. Nor can we ignore the ways in which science has been misused to harm marginalized communities. The lack of inclusivity and diversity in STEM thwarts scientific advancements not only by limiting who conducts the research, but also by influencing what topics are studied, who participates in the research, and who will benefit from or be harmed by it.

Sound like left wing politics to you, and not science? That was the effect they were going for. Organizers insist, “It was a mistake to ever imply that the March for Science is apolitical — while this march is explicitly non-partisan, it is political” (the original statement was in bold type).

Yet the positions taken by the politicians, activists, and many others involved in the March are rankly partisan. They insist on diversity. That means rigorous, mandatory and monitored balance between people from favored groups. This is not a scientific concept. It is pure politics. And anti-scientific politics, at that.

We observe that men and women have about the same averages on intelligence tests. But more men than women have extreme scores (both low and high). That’s one reason why there are far more men than women in the club of elite research mathematicians. There is also the matter of choice. Far more men than women choose to do theoretical physics.

Marchers call this a “disparity.” The rest of us call it a banal consequence of nature and freedom. Yet marchers insist on the theory of equality, which says that men and women must all be innately equal in all abilities, and must be equally represented in every field.

The march organizers are adamant, though, that theory rules over evidence. They tweeted, “For those wondering, #intersectionality is a core principle of #ScienceMarch, and we will soon be releasing our formal vision.”

Intersectionality is the theory that only trained academics and activists can spot “oppression” of favored political groups. Or it might be better said, as Andrew Sullivan did, that intersectionality is a religion and not just a theory. Except that that insults religion. It’s really a false religion. (For more from the author of “March for Science Descending Into Farce” please click HERE)

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